Great Expectations eBook

I got away from him, without knowing how I did it,
and mended the fire in the room where we had been
together, and sat down by it, afraid to go to bed.
For an hour or more, I remained too stunned to think;
and it was not until I began to think, that I began
fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship
in which I had sailed was gone to pieces.

Miss Havisham’s intentions towards me, all a
mere dream; Estella not designed for me; I only suffered
in Satis House as a convenience, a sting for the greedy
relations, a model with a mechanical heart to practise
on when no other practice was at hand; those were
the first smarts I had. But, sharpest and deepest
pain of all — it was for the convict, guilty
of I knew not what crimes, and liable to be taken
out of those rooms where I sat thinking, and hanged
at the Old Bailey door, that I had deserted Joe.

I would not have gone back to Joe now, I would not
have gone back to Biddy now, for any consideration:
simply, I suppose, because my sense of my own worthless
conduct to them was greater than every consideration.
No wisdom on earth could have given me the comfort
that I should have derived from their simplicity and
fidelity; but I could never, never, undo what I had
done.

In every rage of wind and rush of rain, I heard pursuers.
Twice, I could have sworn there was a knocking and
whispering at the outer door. With these fears
upon me, I began either to imagine or recall that
I had had mysterious warnings of this man’s approach.
That, for weeks gone by, I had passed faces in the
streets which I had thought like his. That,
these likenesses had grown more numerous, as he, coming
over the sea, had drawn nearer. That, his wicked
spirit had somehow sent these messengers to mine, and
that now on this stormy night he was as good as his
word, and with me.

Crowding up with these reflections came the reflection
that I had seen him with my childish eyes to be a
desperately violent man; that I had heard that other
convict reiterate that he had tried to murder him;
that I had seen him down in the ditch tearing and
fighting like a wild beast. Out of such remembrances
I brought into the light of the fire, a half-formed
terror that it might not be safe to be shut up there
with him in the dead of the wild solitary night.
This dilated until it filled the room, and impelled
me to take a candle and go in and look at my dreadful
burden.

He had rolled a handkerchief round his head, and his
face was set and lowering in his sleep. But
he was asleep, and quietly too, though he had a pistol
lying on the pillow. Assured of this, I softly
removed the key to the outside of his door, and turned
it on him before I again sat down by the fire.
Gradually I slipped from the chair and lay on the
floor. When I awoke, without having parted in
my sleep with the perception of my wretchedness, the
clocks of the Eastward churches were striking five,
the candles were wasted out, the fire was dead, and
the wind and rain intensified the thick black darkness.